I find very fascinating how a change in trailer soundtrack (among other things) can change the apparent tone of a film so drastically. Now I'm wondering what a Hobbit trailer with Concerning Hobbits as its soundtrack will sound like

But even a good movie can be diminished by a bad score. And I know how you feel about the LOTR trilogy, but the movies wouldn't have been bad without HS's exceptional score.....they would have just, IMO, lost their longevity. I attribute that particular feature, that staying power of the trilogy to several things, but mainly to Shore's music.

And I can mention several other films in the same vein: 2001 A Space Odyssey, the original Star Wars trilogy, Lawrence of Arabia, etc. Each of them are strong films in their own right, but they are as much musical experiences as they are visual ones, and I believe the power of their respective soundtracks lends each of them a sense of timelessness that they otherwise would not have had.

But Lawrence of Arabia, for example, is a masterpiece in terms of cinematography, acting and directing (which far outweigh the score, IMO). Just the introduction of Sherif Ali alone, slowly emerging from the shimmering heat of the desert, is worth more than all the music in the film.

In my view, the same cannot be said of LOTR. It has a good score, but the cinematography and direction doesn't come close to LoA (only for very brief moments does it near the mark). The actors are generally good - especially Ian McKellen, Ian Holm, Sean Bean, Bernard Hill, Karl Urban, and Viggo Mortensen - but PJ's insistence on over-acting and melodrama wastes a lot of that talent.

In any event, I am now more glad than ever that Shore is scoring the films. The awful music in the trailer woke me up to the simple fact that he's very much needed for these films to work.